Science and technology

Difference Engine

Calculus of innovation

WHAT is it that American policymakers do not get about proficiency in mathematics and science at high school being one of the most important predictors of economic success—both for individuals themselves and for the country as a whole? The Chinese get it, whether in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore or Taiwan. So do the South Koreans and the Japanese. Likewise, the Swiss, the Dutch and the Finns take great pains to ensure their high schools teach mathematics and science rigorously, so that they can continue to keep their research lights burning brightly and their industrial batteries fully charged.

Nations now realise that any slowdown in the supply of technical talent can cause their industries to become less innovative and competitive. And as innovation supplies half or more of economic growth these days, that could quickly lead to national hardship.

Of the 65 countries and economic regions that participated in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15-year-olds from the Shanghai were top of the class in mathematics, science and reading—the three subjects tested in the triennial study that has become the yardstick for evaluating the quality, fairness and efficiency of school systems around the world.

All told, some 510,000 high-school students participated in the latest PISA test, administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Pupils take a two-hour standardised test, and then spend up to an hour filling out a questionnaire on their learning habits, background and family. The results of the 2012 test were published in December 2013. After Shanghai, four tiger economies plus South Korea and Japan occupied the next half a dozen places. Meanwhile, America continued its downward slide in the rankings, this time coming a lowly 36th in mathematics, 28th in science and 24th in reading

It is not as though America does not spend enough on high-school education. In the recent PISA test, the United States and Slovakia got roughly equal marks (481 and 482 respectively) in mathematics, but America spent more than twice as much per head ($115,000 versus $53,000) in purchasing-power-parity terms to achieve its score. The Czech Republic, with broadly similar rankings as America, spent a third as much per pupil. Only Austria, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland spent proportionately more.

In America’s case, the extra money did not buy better results. One in four of the country’s 15-year-olds failed to reach PISA’s baseline Level 2 of mathematical proficiency (the level at which pupils begin to demonstrate skills needed to participate in the workforce). Among the high-performing countries, only one pupil in ten failed to reach Level 2. Meanwhile, just 2% of American 15-year-olds achieved Level 6 in mathematics, the highest level of proficiency, compared with 31% in Shanghai.

Apologists say that comparing America with Shanghai is like comparing apples with oranges. A sample of high-school pupils drawn from such a diverse nation as the United States will inevitably contain a greater proportion of pupils from poorer districts with dismal schools than a sample selected from just the wealthiest part of China.

Others note that education systems based on Confucian values—such as those of South Korea and Japan as well as Hong Kong, Singapore and China itself—have long used private tutoring and crammer schools to supplement lessons learned in public classrooms. Such cultures, they say, excel at preparing students to pass tough government tests, rather than solve real-world problems.

And yet, one of the biggest weaknesses American 15-year-olds have consistently displayed in PISA tests over the years has been establishing mathematical models of real-world problems and interpreting the results. On more routine matters, such as applying formulae or extracting data from tables and charts, their mathematical competence has been better than average.

Also, China is rapidly becoming more like America than many realise or care to admit. Shanghai, for instance, is no longer an elite enclave for professional families with smart kids and dragon mothers. Home to 23.5m people, it is not only the largest city in China, but also the biggest in the world. According to the OECD, the Shanghai education authority has successfully jettisoned its traditional focus on educating a minority of high performers for top jobs in government, business and academia, and is nowadays far more inclusive. High-school enrollment exceeds 98%, with 80% of the relevant age group going on to college.

Moreover, tests carried out in a dozen rural regions of China produced results close to the PISA average. The implication is that the educational reforms pioneered in Shanghai and elsewhere are now spreading rapidly across the country. Inevitably, such reforms will make the Chinese people even more productive.

What, then, should America do to slow the dumbing down of its workforce and shore up its position as the sixth wealthiest nation in GDP per capita?

It is not easy to say. Many of the measures that work in other countries are culturally specific, and thus difficult to emulate. Finland, for instance, has achieved its consistently high PISA ranking over the years by ensuring that only the country’s best and brightest become teachers. As such, those who do so have high social status, though not necessarily high pay. As a measure of how prestigious teaching is in Finland, the New York Times reported recently that 6,600 applicants competed in 2010 for 660 primary-school preparation places in the eight Finnish universities licensed to educate teachers. In Finland, school teachers are clearly the pick of the graduate crop.

That is not the case in the United States. With its free labour market, America over-produces teachers for elementary schools, where the qualifications required to enter teacher-training school are minimal. But the country seriously under-produces teachers for more rigorous STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Unable to offer competitive salaries and short on prestige, teaching is shunned by the best and the brightest of America's STEM graduates for careers in business, finance and research. Only 10% of the 1,200 teacher-training programmes examined recently by a government advisory body were rated high quality, with the rest requiring low or no qualifications for entry.

The obvious answer is to make teacher-training more selective. The teaching profession might then become more prestigious and effective. How to do that, though, is the difficult part. Providing teachers with better working conditions, more opportunities for professional development, and granting them greater freedom to chose what and how to teach their coursework could do much to make the profession more appealing to top-notch graduates.

Increasing pay for teachers with STEM qualifications would also help, though remuneration has never been the main attraction that has drawn talented people to teaching—as Finland's experience so amply demonstrates. Yet more market-related pay for STEM teachers would certainly increase the pool of applicants, allowing the teacher-training schools to become more selective. But when it comes to awarding merit pay, vested interests have a way of thwarting the best of intentions. In a new merit-pay system introduced recently in Florida, 99% of the teaching staff in one county got top marks—prompting one local citizen to wonder whether all the children were above average, too.

Joking aside, ensuring that all the children, not just the gifted, can participate to the best of their abilities at school is the key to raising education standards across the board. Countries that perform best on the PISA tests are ones that allocate resources more equitably between good schools and bad ones.

Canada has been particularly successful at doing this. In the most recent PISA test, it ranked 13th in mathematics, 8th in science and 7th in reading. The trick has been to move funding from the local school districts to the provinces, which then allocate resources according to a formula that takes into account a school district’s size, needs and local demographics.

That is harder to do in America, where school districts rely to a far greater extent on local property taxes. As a consequence, schools in wealthy areas tend to be well funded and those in hard-scrabble places a lot less so. Meanwhile, supplementary money from state taxes is rarely enough to make up the difference. Overall, the wealthiest school districts spend twice as much per pupil as the poorest. In Massachusetts and California, the ratio is more like three to one. This lop-sided allocation of resources traps 40% of high-school kids in districts that offer them little chance to shine.

It is not just the distorted allocation of resources that hobbles American education. An outdated curriculum, especially in mathematics, shares much of the blame for the country's poor performance on PISA tests. In numerous surveys, nine out of ten high-school students admit they are not interested in studying STEM subjects, because classes are dull, the subject matter irrelevant, and the teachers ill-prepared. Great hopes are therefore being placed by education authorities in the new “Common Core” curriculum for high-school mathematics and English language instruction. This is currently being implemented in 45 of America’s 50 states.

No question, the Common Core learning initiative embraces all the right buzz words—like “deeper learning” and “critical thinking” being taught to “fewer, clearer and higher standards”. But insiders worry that the necessary text books for the new curriculum do not as yet exist, while existing ones are wholly inappropriate. Another concern is that the teachers, lacking guidance, are likely to struggle as much as their pupils when it comes to comprehending the new material.

The anxieties do not end there. It has recently come to light that the basic aim of the new mathematics curriculum is not to raise standards all round, but to provide high-school pupils with just enough maths to meet the needs of a “non-selective college”—ie, one without courses in science, engineering or mathematics. “The Common Core deliberately leaves out major topics in trigonometry and pre-calculus,” says Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita at the University of Arkansas and a former member of Common Core’s validation committee.

Students needing calculus in their first year at university—a prerequisite for studying any of the major STEM disciplines—will therefore have to take extra courses in mathematics beforehand. That is going to be a challenge for those who cannot afford private tuition. In other words, rather than increase the number of future scientists and engineers, America's new high-school curriculum will more than likely throttle the supply. Sad to say, the Common Core is an admission of defeat, not the innovative inspiration for higher achievement that many parents had hoped for.

As a father of two high school children in Ohio, who was educated in public schools in Canada, I have formed some opinions:

1. The kids don't spend that many hours a year in school, and the teachers waste a lot of that time on non-essential activities.

2. Few kids choose to take the hard sciences (and their parents don't make them). Of the 90 seniors in my son's class, there are 8 in the AP Physics, 6 in AP Calculus, 9 in AP Chemistry, and 30 in AP Biology. Many more take advanced English, Spanish, or Psychology. Science and math are hard. Most kids and their parents don't feel the need to do hard things.

3. The quality of the science teachers is horrifically bad. Just abysmal. Math is better, but still not great. Definitely lower half of the university class in their disciplines.

4. Most teachers I've met are in the field because they needed a job after college, and teacher's school was easy, and because they like the short hours and long summers. In 13 years of seeing my kids in school, I've never met a teacher that I would consider above average in intelligence, and I've never met a science or math teacher who I would hire to work for me in any capacity (I supervise engineers in a manufacturing environment).

Skilled professionals are well paid in the US. We need fewer, higher paid skilled professional teachers, who are given lower paid subordinates to do the babysitting, grading, and other grunt work. In short, we need to make teaching a modern profession, or it just won't attract professional grade people. As for the lack of interest in students and children in STEM subjects that will lead to upper-middle-class wages, we need a lot more straight talk from our leaders (mostly politicians without STEM skills) to scare American parents and students into a more motivated state.

* Meanwhile, America continued its downward slide in the rankings, this time coming a lowly 36th in mathematics, 28th in science and 24th in reading.* - From article
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These results look entirely consistent with the impression generated by a cross-section of the comments written by TE readers who self-identify as Americans. The general literacy level in math, statistics, biology, foreign cultures, arts, music, humanities, basic reading comprehension (in English) are aghast. Then there are a subset who are top-notch. Problem is in this competitive world, a few cannot carry the lot.

You seem to be focusing on symptoms, rather than on the cause. Yes, we could put a higher priority on teaching STEM topics. Yes, raising teacher requirements would help. Lots of things would help. But those are treating the symptoms.
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So what is the cause? Look at it this way. If we taught more children more and better about math and science, what would happen? Well, for openers it would make them more accepting of data from the real world . . . even when it conflicts with things that they think that they know. That, after all, is what science is all about: looking at the data and being skeptical of theories which don't fit the data.
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Which means the kids could end up believing in evolution and other horrors! Why would America want to let that happen? Obviously we (collectively) wouldn't. And until we get past the kind of blind fundamentalism that thinks that way, the problem won't get fixed. Not because it can't be fixed, or is hard to fix. But because we don't really want to fix it.

One of the most fundamental truths of life is deliberately overlooked and fearfully avoided in American education: schooling is not equivalent to education.
We will not admit certain glaringly obvious truths in the US due to our social/political history; and would be political/professional suicide to even mention those truths that are self-evident pretty much in all the top-scoring countries, whether in Asia or Europe.
In essence as long as we do not admit to our willful ignorance, the problem cannot be addressed. Here, in the US, we are all equally smart, beautiful and good - or we will be if we spend enough money on it...

We force our children to be toilet trained, we force them to wash themselves and clean their rooms, we force them to eat their vegetables. We even force them to go to school every day. Setting minimum standards of educational progress in various areas is well within the scope of parental control. My family, like most, is a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy. In my benevolence, I decree the taking of advanced science classes in high school, with very few second thoughts. They can thank me later.

That point has been expounded by many learned people in the US, but in our degree-crazy school-snob society of today, in the eyes of the average person having a practically unemployable degree is preferable to a high-paying trade school certificate. Go figure...

*Well, for openers it would make them more accepting of data from the real world . . . even when it conflicts with things that they think that they know. That, after all, is what science is all about: looking at the data and being skeptical of theories which don't fit the data.* - Your comment
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I so agree! Americans (collectively) don't want to fix the problem. They want the world to stay frozen and unchanged so they can indulge in their fantasy of cultural omnipotence. Anything that threatens that fantasy they will fight. In fact, the mindset is if there is a problem, the problem is not in them, it is in someone else. They don't need to change. It is everyone else who needs to change to accommodate them. What can you do?!

Finland is always highlighted by educators in the West who want more state resources to fight poverty, and use this excuse to deflect poor education results.

Finland Education Excellence is a Myth.
Finland is Falling.

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Chinese classrooms by comparison are unheated, packed with over 50 students per teacher, poverty is endemic, and teachers make less than a janitor in Finland.

Finish schools spend more money on bus transportation than Chinese spend on total education per student.

Yet over 55% of the Chinese students are doing elite mathematics and excelling.

There is no heat however there is serious learning happening in Chinese classrooms.

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IT is NOT simply more money = better education.

Rather it is teachers, students and parents all working hard to excel.

If students do not work hard at their homework, they should fail.
Simple approach to academic mastery:
Do 10 novel math or science problems a night.
This builds simple problem solving skills that are life long tools.
Video games are a great time waster and decrease academic performance.

"... but they receive no proper guidance in their growth and development, education-wise and emotionally. I think as a society, we have failed them miserably."

What is truly sad is that, we failed ourselves as much as we failed the future generation, and we are neither willing, nor able to see and admit this. We are still looking for excuses. No problem can be remedied unless its existence is admitted...

Seriously though, American kids are very precocious. I think more so compared with their counterparts in other cultures. Many many are extremely and truly above average bright (R side of the Bell Curve), but they receive no proper guidance in their growth and development, education-wise and emotionally. I think as a society, we have failed them miserably.
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A young person needs guidance. The guidance ideally comes from parents, chiefly in the positive role-modeling parents provide (good things like work ethic, social conscience, self-awareness, informed world-view). But we seem to have a generation of parents who are not quite done with figuring out their own stuff, and transfer their undone stuff to their innocent children, in bad ways. All of this is very very sad.

"It would be interesting to know how you disentangle biology from culture. "
I honestly do not believe that, that kind of research would be either funded or seriously considered by any institution/university that would not have a death wish. That subject is pretty much "the third rail". Seriously. Although we have no problems with recognizing different results due to physical capabilities, attributable to biology (how could we not?), differences in cognitive skills/abilities will never be attributed to biology in the US; unless that biology can be attributed to some social ills. But, yes, out of sheer intellectual curiosity, it would be very interesting to see how biology could be disentangled from culture.

Actually, I can believe this. For example, we have basic science textbooks which ignore evolution. Why? Because one of the biggest buyers is the state of Texas. And the Texas Department of Education voted to not buy textbooks which included it.
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So rather than create two versions of their product, they made what was demanded. And so not just one (large) state gets the results of its politics; everybody is blessed with the result.
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Definitely a political decision. Definitely impacting the education system.

" Students have to want to learn ..."
That is just it. How does one accomplish that? Only teachers who have love for and mastery of their subjects who have a fighting chance of making their students want to learn. We have frighteningly few of those teachers in the US, sadly.
Regarding your observations about gadgets the following was said by Saul Bellow when queried about whether he had a word processor (or something to that effect):" I'll get a word processor when they'll write better literature with word processors than with pen".

I also took SAT (but a million years ago!) for US universities coming up from a UK-modeled system. A-level math was way higher than SAT math. In fact, many of us took the SAT fresh out of 12th grade and scored 90th percentile without much preparation (this is consistent with the info in the article). A few top students scored 800 out of 800 (in those days, 800 Math and 800 Reading were the two parts of SAT). I have been in US for many years now. When I found out what high school kids study in math, I couldn't believe my eyes! Why are the expectations so low? It definitely is not because the kids in America are stupid. They are NOT! I don't know the answer.

The political right in America puts the Bible over science and views teachers, like any other government employees, as an enemy to be crushed. Wherever Republicans take control, they slash education spending. The result is a country descending into chaos.

It's amazing isn't it? We can accept that blacks are better at basketball, track and field, singing, dancing, but we can't accept that Asians are better at math.
It's ironic but those who love to accuse the right of letting creationism get in the way of learning real science often have no trouble letting political correctness get in the way of learning real science, such as the truthful interpretation of empirical data based on race.

It would be interesting to know how you disentangle biology from culture. Because when you say that a certain group is "funamentally more adept" at something, you are arguing that something that cannot be changed (biology) is responsible. But do you have any evidence that the cause is not cultural (e.g. a culture-based valuation for education)?

There's also the question of the school "reform" movement, which seems expressly designed to vastly increase inequality by plucking the most intelligent and most wealthy students out of public schools and into well-equipped private ones, while slashing funding for the public system and letting the unfortunate majority suffer. There is also an awful insistence on measuring knowledge and capabilities by standardized testing, which leads to nothing much but to teaching to tests!

Finally, the focus on adding more gadgets and computers to the classroom as well as pushing costly "interactive" textbooks and learning materials does not seem to have any impact whatsoever on education outcomes. Why would it? Students have to want to learn in order to do so, and dazzling and confusing them while driving down their attention spans is hardly the way to go. Lasting education comes primarily from a desire to gain knowledge (the mechanisms of gaining this knowledge are of much lesser importance - you can't make a bored student learn with a new iPad, but you can make an interested student learn from stone tablets!) and to truly think critically, and almost everything in our society today discourages that.